"US Army might have found its new rifle in Colorado..." Topic
16 Posts
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20 May 2019 6:43 p.m. PST by Editor in Chief Bill
- Changed title from "US Army might have found its new rifle in Colorado ......" to "US Army might have found its new rifle in Colorado..."Crossposted to Firearms board
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Tango01 | 01 Oct 2018 1:04 p.m. PST |
….Springs garaje "The Army adopted its battle rifle in 1963 and has spent 55 years looking for a replacement for the M-16 and its variants. They might have found it in Martin Grier's Colorado Springs garage. Grier, a self-described inventor who has worked at a local bed and breakfast, built the new "ribbon gun" with a hobbyist's tools. It looks like a space-age toy drawn by a fifth-grader. But goofy origins and cartoon-looks aside, this could be the gun of the future. The Army is studying Grier's gun and has ordered a military-grade prototype…." link
Main page link
Amicalement Armand |
goragrad | 01 Oct 2018 3:16 p.m. PST |
That ammo block looks rather bulkier than the four cartridges it is replacing. Not sure how that will impact loadouts. |
Thresher01 | 01 Oct 2018 4:45 p.m. PST |
Hmmm, an interesting, and very ugly design. Wonder how much it weighs with those ammo blocks? That's usually the real killer of more sophisticated weapons. EMP does seem like a possible concern too, as well as viability in high moisture environments, or heavy rain. Electronics don't like that. AR-10 works for me. 7.62mm version of the AR-15/M4. Tested, and proven. |
Lion in the Stars | 01 Oct 2018 4:59 p.m. PST |
What the heck happened to the LSAT caseless LMG? |
StoneMtnMinis | 01 Oct 2018 5:08 p.m. PST |
The military always looks at new weapon designs. Some of the "blockiness" may be due to being built with "hobbyist tools". |
Bronco53 | 01 Oct 2018 7:54 p.m. PST |
LOL. No. No one in the military is seriously interested in that POS. It literally replaces the brass cases with even heavier steel "ammunition blocks" which are, fundamentally, exactly the same thing as expendable rifle chambers. It also requires multiple barrels (four or five), which makes the weight (and cost!) of not only the ammunition, but the rifle skyrocket, and adds the issue of having to regulate five different barrels to hit at, or near the same point of aim. Regulating multiple barrels is a difficult process. There is a reason that double-barreled African big game guns cost so much: a lot of it is in the difficulty getting the barrels lined up right. And that's just for TWO barrels! Functionally, this thing is roughly equivalent to an 1860s era revolver: instead of putting new cartridges into the gun, you put in a new cylinder pre-loaded with power and shot. It's also kind of like the system used in the Agar "coffee mill gun" ( link ) in that, instead of having metallic cartridges, it just fed a hopper full of pre-loaded barrel chambers into the gun. Now, do you know of any military in the world that has continued using cap-and-ball revolver style reloads, or anything like the Agar gun since then? You're literally making the most pressure-critical part of the gun (the chamber) into an expendable part. The part that has to be the strongest bit in the entire system is thrown away every shot. The part that has to be the strongest, and therefore is the heaviest. Sounds… dumb. No, you have not seen anything of the like since the 1860s. Because the idea ISN'T new, and it IS stupid. |
Zephyr1 | 01 Oct 2018 8:36 p.m. PST |
"It also requires multiple barrels (four or five), which makes the weight (and cost!) of not only the ammunition, but the rifle skyrocket, and adds the issue of having to regulate five different barrels(…)" Not to mention cleaning them. Can't imagine that multiplied chore being popular with the troops… |
Gunfreak | 02 Oct 2018 8:38 a.m. PST |
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Tango01 | 02 Oct 2018 11:40 a.m. PST |
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General Kirchner | 02 Oct 2018 9:54 p.m. PST |
+1 Bronco53. just because you can doesn't mean you should. No military is taking the thing seriously. Calling it caseless does not make it so. fun poking around weird concept gun, YES. Military gun of the future? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA |
Patrick R | 03 Oct 2018 12:31 p.m. PST |
Every few years the army tries a new concept, remember SPIW ? Flechettes and the ACR ? Three-Round burst ? XM-8 ? Unless one comes up with a really new concept that offers a marked advantage over current weapons (and no, 6.x mm ammo doesn't make the cut) it's going to be AR-15/M16 in 5.56mm for quite a while yet. (Bonus if your concept fits inside an M4 or smaller/lighter package) |
General Kirchner | 03 Oct 2018 4:08 p.m. PST |
lots of good data on why a 6.5mm makes sense, but then again it should have made sense a long time ago, when the US forced NATO to adopt a modern version of the 30-06, and then said "oops" in vietnam a short time later and adopted the 5.56. The issues or perceived issues the troops have with the range of the 5.56 in Iraq and Afghanistan could have been mitigated (not completely solved) also. Of course the brits looked at super long range rifles after the boer war right before they went into the trenches in WWI. But i agree with patrick R, its not changing anytime soon from a 5.56 or m4 type weapon. the marines going to a piston version didn't change the caliber, of course that decision wont get made by marines anyway. |
Lion in the Stars | 03 Oct 2018 9:42 p.m. PST |
Well, part of the problem with changing caliber is the logistics of it. You'd have to build up a massive stockpile of the new ammo caliber long before you actually did the change, and that's on top of buying all the 5.56 and 7.62NATO ammo. If you go to 6.x in an M4/M16 (or M27), you need new magazines, new barrels, new bolts. Oh, and new disintegrating links for the MGs. The good news would be that you could drop the M240s entirely and use nothing but M249 SAWs. Or you could up-caliber the M240s to something like .338 Norma and have your platoon MGs with the range of .50cals. If you can get plastic case telescoped or caseless to work, you might as well step all the way up and not futz around with yet another brass-cased caliber. Get the basic infantry rifle back down to the 5lbs of the .30 Carbine. For some horrible amusement, compare the ballistics of the 6.5 Grendel and the old 6.5 Arisaka. They're almost identical!
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Blutarski | 15 Jun 2019 4:21 p.m. PST |
Hi LitS – "What is old is new again!" Given that 6.5mm Arisaka ammunition of any sort seems to be "unobtainium" nowadays, what do you consider the chances of the Arisaka rifle being re-chambered for the Grendel cartridge? B |
Lion in the Stars | 15 Jun 2019 9:17 p.m. PST |
You can buy 6.5 Arisaka ammo made by PPU (Prvi Partisan), out of Serbia. Good quality components, powder leaves a lot of black fouling though. 6.5 Arisaka is a lot longer than 6.5 Grendel, and the Arisaka case head is bigger. That's not an easy re-chambering, you'd need to replace the bolt and barrel. That's a complete rebuild. So I'd say chances of someone trying that rechamber is zero. Can't go to 6.5 Creedmore, either, the case head is a different size (Creedmore is bigger). Can't covert to the 7.7, case head of that is different, too. So people with a 6.5 Arisaka need to either buy PPU or reload. Reloading is cheaper, and 6.5 Arisaka uses the standard 6.5mm bullet diameter. PPU does make good brass, though. Kinda funny, I have a Howa Precision 1500 Mini in 6.5 Grendel. Howa made the Weatherby Vanguard rifles for a really long time, it's a very nice rifle (sub-1" group at 100y!). Howa also made some of the Type 38 Arisaka rifles back in the day!
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Blutarski | 16 Jun 2019 8:30 a.m. PST |
Hi LitS – Understood re the unlikelihood of a simple re-chambering exercise. OTOH, thank you very much for the referral to PPU (Prvi Partisan) as a source for 6.5mm Arisaka ammunition. I have a Type "I" 6.5mm Arisaka rifle ("I" = pre-war Italian contract manufacture for the IJN) that my father liberated from Yokosuka Navy Arsenal in August 1945. I have never fired it. B |
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